20mph trial planned for Theale
West Berkshire could see an increase in the number of roads limited to 20 miles per hour.
The council's executive discussed recommendations to bring in the '20 is plenty' speed restrictions.
But it was advised to stop short of bringing in the district-wide limit as this would, according to council officers, "result in an inconsistent approach to speed limit setting that would be unlikely to be respected and enforced".
An alternative approach to increase the number of 20mph speed limits was proposed and will be piloted in Theale.
It was resolved that new criteria for 20mph speed limits or 20mph zones are agreed with members over the course of the current financial year and, after the pilot scheme in Theale and adoption of the new criteria, officers will produce a detailed cost estimate.
It is expected that the new limits will be rolled out on roads that meet the new criteria over the following three or four years.
The council said a widespread roll-out of 20mph speed limits would require capital funding of the order of hundreds of thousands of pounds over the course of a number of financial years.
The principal risks to implementing any new approach concern financial and staff resources.
"There is a significant cost to rolling out 20mph speed limits on a widespread basis, but that cost is more readily quantifiable if new speed limits are implemented in a consistent and planned manner, rather than in response to individual requests," said the report to the committee.
"It is highly likely that the current £30,000 annual capital budget set aside for speed limit changes would not be sufficient if the new approach generated a lot of requests."
The cost will depend on the overall length of highway that meets the new criteria.
Initial estimates are that it would cost an average of approximately £3,170 per kilometre of road to introduce the necessary regulatory signs.
To illustrate the possible total costs, 485km of the district roads network is currently subject to a 30mph speed limit.
If half of this length of road was reduced to 20mph, this would equate to a total cost of £768,725 at current prices. This does not include staffing or advertisement costs or inflation.
The council's executive committee discussed the motion, put forward by Adrian Abbs (Ind, Wash Common) in March, at last week's meeting.